Ethnic grocery stores are great places to find inexpensive bulk spices locally. I've also had some truly amazing things from The Spice House in Chicago (online and DH picked some things up once when he was there on business).

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Emily - Proud Mama to Will (Dec 06) And Lillian Rose (Feb 09)
My Lily was 9.11lbs and delivered by VBAC - I did it!

Frontier is good too and they have coops on here. And just as an aside, Penzey's and The Spice House are owned by the same family. The owner of Penzey's sister owns The Spice House. Their parents started a spice business in WI and the kids split it I guess. Here is the story. Anyway, it seems to me that Penzey's is more focused on mail order and the spice house is more about retail shops. Many of their blends are similar and both are excellent quality.

I run the Frontier co-op here on DS. I use Frontier spices and some Penzeys. Penzeys mostly because they have a local store and there are a few blends they make that I love, case in point: Sandwich Sprinkle. That's a bit of heaven as far as I'm concerned. For anything that Frontier sells though, I think the prices and quality are great.

The options around me simply aren't very good, and I am just beginning to explore online options. There is an Amish store way out in the country with cheap spices, but their selection is extremely limited (and it's not like they are organic or anything).

I wanted to chime in re: grocery stores that I recently bought some spices my sister in S. America wanted sent down with my mom from Walmart, thinking that would be cheapest. Long behold I discovered later that week that Publix (which is usually a crazy expensive store) had jars of spices cheaper than Walmart, a better selection, and probably better brands too.